Europe in the crossfire

Russia’s yearning for redemption and Chinese ambition affect international dialogue regarding military cooperation while Europe straggles behind

In this corner of the world for the last seventy years we’ve been living in a happy place: ever since the iron curtain went up we found ourselves in unusual Cold War condition, but subconsciously the idea of conflict was banned, owing to both the memory of the tragedy that had just ended and the annihilating novelty of the nuclear bomb; so armies were at the ready, but they stayed in the background, separate bodies in spite of national service, viewed with a certain dismay, especially in certain countries, such as Italy and Germany. France and Great Britain found themselves in a different predicament, having to deal with the process of decolonisation, but once again, whenever the military option was resorted to (Suez, 1956) those using it had to back down when faced with the fact that the use of force or even the threat of it was essentially an exclusive prerogative of the two major powers, the US and the USSR.

This kicked off the multilateral approach, which now became much more than just a negotiating instrument and took on a political significance which reached its climax with the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki, 1975). This provided the foundations for OSCE and in 1990 led to the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. It was a kind of conceptual reversal: the armed forces were no longer an active tool of foreign policy, but rather a passive object through which one might achieve détente, with a process which could be described as the demilitarisation of international relations, now based on the fostering of mutual trust, in a context of mutual transparency. However, this system only applied to this particular region, while the ancient rationale still held true in the rest of the world, often under the instigation of those very same major powers that on the European stage had embraced a new vision.

So, while in Europe we witnessed a tacit yet relentless gradual disarmament, with the welcome securing of the ‘peace dividend’, elsewhere that same situation did not catch on, as proven by the increase in potential and value of military expenditure in areas like the Middle and Far East.

The reasons and responsibilities are undoubtedly many. The appearance of new players on the international stage that were now staking a claim to becoming leading rather than bit players, the lack of solutions to ingrained conflicts, the tensions that led to the dissolution of unbalanced states: history turned out to be the harbinger of unexpected crises, with consequences that in any case had a bearing on “Old Europe”, if nothing else owing to the flow of refugees and migrants that started to put pressure on the borders and the creation of the right breeding ground for organised crime networks involved in all kinds of trafficking.

The climate was changing, especially outside Europe, with two factors that turned out to be crucial: Russia’s yearning for redemption and Chinese ambitions.

One may discuss at length who is to blame for Russian Revanchism: the initial overtures designed to set up a  new collaborative relationship, which culminated in the creation of the NATO-Russia Council and the Pratica di Mare summit, were perceived in Russia as painful concession, justified by the dramatic economic and social crisis that has followed the events of 1989, and the accession of the Baltic states into NATO was considered proof that the West intended to surround Russia and throttle it to death. Then came July 2007 and Russia’s suspension of the effectiveness of the CFE (Conventional Forces Europe) Treaty which had led to the demolition of over 52,000 war machines, namely bullet-proof and armoured vehicles and fighter planes and helicopters), thus making military power once more central to politics; everything that followed went in the same direction: the suggestion that Ukraine and Georgia might joint NATO, the brief conflict in August 2008 between the latter and the Russian Federation, the 2014 crisis in Ukraine and the occupation/annexation of the Crimea to Russia. All resulted from the actual use of armed force to fulfil political objectives.

China‘s situation is different but the outcome is much the same. Since its refounding under Mao Zedong the Asian giant has viewed its military power almost exclusively as providing internal territorial control, despite the serious military support, though primarily on the logistics front, it offered to military operations in Korea and Vietnam.

The reform of China’s military deployment objectives began in the middle of the Eighties, with a drastic cut in personnel that was achieved by transferring just short of half of it to the territorial militias with the strategic intent of transforming its armed forces into a projection force. This has been and is a very broad and long-term process that lends confirmation to the tendency for armed forces to carry an active role in foreign affairs management. Nor could it be otherwise: a geographic and anthropic giant, experiencing sustained growth, thirsty for energy and natural resources it imports from every corner of the globe, China soon came to realise that its policies aiming at economic expansion had to have the essential support of a military element and not only and not just with a view to compete with/stand up to the United States, but also and more importantly to establish an unquestioned political influence over its neighbours , so that they would fall under their umbrella. The economic projection that was already taking place was therefore backed by a military projection, which cannot be denied given the kinds of weapons’ systems they have acquired (air-craft carriers and much more), the construction of bases abroad (Djibouti) and the appearance of its own naval vessels in the Mediterranean on a much more regular basis.

All this considered, it’s therefore correct to presume that, though we haven’t yet fallen back on ‘gunboat diplomacy’, the military influence is becoming increasingly relevant, as proven by the military importance now assigned to instruments and environments which up to now seemed not to be taken into consideration, such as space and cybernetics.

In this context the attitude taken by European countries, which still seem to wholeheartedly embrace a multilateral handling of international affairs, is clearly at odds with the decided shift towards bilateral negotiations of the major powers, a bilateralism which is clearly the ideal environment to exploit the military prerogative. Even countries with a more long-standing tradition, such as France and the UK, besides the occasional rather fanciful operation (the air-raids against Syria), cannot escape this way of thinking. But it’s an attitude that is clearly based on the awareness of their essential incapacity. Over and above the lack of investments this attitude is the result of the political and capability fragmentation of our continent.

In a world that is unsheathing its sword to back its policies, European countries can choose to keep separate and passively adjust to dynamics managed by others, or resolutely proceed towards a federal or at least confederate type of future, the only possible evolution that might allow them to choose between adapting to the political methods imposed by the US, Russia and China or backing multilateralism wholeheartedly in the management of foreign affairs, promoting it not just as a procedural choice but as a value of its own accord.

@camporin1

This article is also published in the March/April issue of eastwest.

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